Not the real one, of course. The in-game, Ultima Lord British. Crispygamer has posted the second half of their interview with Richard Garriott, and part of it deals with bloodthirsty players.

More than bloodthirsty; absolutely determined to find a means of taking out Lord B., whom Richard kept trying to make invulnerable. You must read the interview to see just how canny some players were. Whatever he came up with, someone found a way around it.

It has always fascinated me that there were those who wanted to kill Lord British. After all, he was helpful in those early games: healing your injuries, resurrecting you if you died, providing information.

So why would anyone want to murder him? All I can think of is that it was seen as a challenge. A stray thought forms: “I wonder if he’s immortal?” From there, it’s only a step to finding out.

Frontal assualt doesn’t work. “Ah, they’re making it difficult for me. Good! I’ll find a way!” And sooner or later, someone would come up with a way to bring him down.

I never tried it myself, because I don’t think along those lines. Hey, this is someone helpful; why try to kill him, even in fun? This would never cross my mind.

There were also players who would kill everyone in a town, just to see if anything resulted. Usually, nothing did. As Richard points out, designers would have to take into consideration all possible player actions, and can you really do that? Especially if you’re not thinking like they do?

Look how he couldn’t even keep his in-game avatar alive. Of course, you could probably turn the entire world hostile. That just gives the player even more people to kill, and some would probably like that. Now, they have a real excuse for homicidal mania!

Yeah, players with world-wrecking urges have always been with us. Sometimes, it may be latent bloodlust coming to the fore. Sometimes, it may only be curiosity, and a desire to see how far the rules can be bent. Either way, I find that a bit unsettling.

LB’s recollections are sloppy. Killing him with the ship’s cannon was the U3 way to do it, not U2. U1 and U2 allow killing him by normal weapons. You never met LB face-to-face in U5 until the cinematic endgame, so you can’t kill him at all there. The glass sword while sleeping is the U6 assassination method. The brass plaque was one–not the sole way–of the U7 ways, not U6, and even played off an incident in his real life where part of a doorframe fell off as he passed underneath and knocked him out. LB doesn’t appear at all in U8, so no regicide in that one, either. In U9, you can feed him poisoned bread, though even this sequence is reputed to be (amusingly) buggy. He’ll eat the bread, die, get back up, eat the bread, die again, get back up, etc.

Typical level of journalistic fact-checking, too. I guess typing “methods of killing lord british” into google was too much to ask. And of course he left out the hilarious UO PK of LB.

I did figure out how to kill him in Ultima III. I think what happened was that I was poisoned and broke. Lord British kept sending me out on my quest, and would heal the party, but wouldn’t help me un-poison the party after a run-in with the dangers of a swamp. I tried killing him in frustration, and found he was… very difficult (I didn’t realize at the time it was impossible).

Much later in the game, after getting a ship, I thought it was time to get my long-awaited revenge. I didn’t save the game after that, but it was fun seeing if it would work.